Eating well in lean times.

July 19, 2009

This story began when I was a child, and I first discovered a black swallowtail butterfly caterpillar in my mother's herb garden. It was the kind of finding that sparks awe in anyone intrigued by nature's colors, creatures and possibilities. My grandfather told me the many-splendored worms would turn into beautiful butterflies. And when a few weeks passed, I was delighted to see the creatures fluttering through the flower garden.

As an adult, I've maintained an affinity for this member of the order lepidoptera. In fact, when I first planted my own herb garden, I decided I'd let the dill go to seed. Each year wanted more and more of the tall, spindly herb to grace my bed. This would leave enough for my potato salad and for the caterpillars. And each spring I have been rewarded by the appearance of the caterpillars, each year in increasing numbers.

But this spring we decided to take things up one notch. Our two year old had caught the black swallowtail bug. Each morning, he would hustle out to the dill to see how "his" caterpillars were doing. After some discussion, we decided we would bring one caterpillar into our home, so that he could watch its growth and metamorphosis up close.

It seemed to be going swimmingly. Twice each day I would bring the caterpillar new dill, and each day he would plow through my offerings, and leave me an ample harvest of caterpillar poo to throw back into the garden. He grew and he grew. And then, one morning he appeared paralyzed on a stick in his home. A day later, he'd become enveloped in his chrysalis. And the wait for the butterfly began.

To make the wait more of an event, I placed the chrysalis on a skewer placed in a vase atop a bookshelf in our living room. There, I figured, we'd be sure to see it when it hatched. We'd also be right by the side door, to let the magnificent creature go free. So, each day, several times a day, we would check on its progress.

Then, last evening, I noticed a hole in the side of the chrysalis. But there was no butterfly in sight. "Has anyone seen a butterfly?" I called. The search was on. Almost immediately, Callawassie, our cat, was indicted. But, not wanting to believe that she could have sacked the butterfly without our knowing, we continued to search. We looked in all of our windows, figuring it might go for light. I shook the curtains and peered behind the blinds. Then, above a living room window, I saw it crawling along the wall.

But it wasn't a butterfly. It was a wasp. It was a long, thin, bright red wasp, with a set of jet black wings that served notice that it was one badass creation. I went into the kitchen and gathered a Solo cup and a piece of paper. I had to capture the creature. I had to get it the hell out of my house. The capture went well, but upon releasing the scourge, it flew directly at me. I screamed like girl at a Jonas Brothers show, then I leaped and spun so that the beast narrowly missed me. Bridget began to chuckle at my reaction, but then it landed on her leg, and she joined in my terror. After a few fleeting moments, the wasp, who I'm now sure was just thanking us for our hospitality, took flight into the Midwestern evening. We quickly lost sight of it.

So, how is it that an ity-bitty-caterpillar grows into a big fat caterpillar, builds itself a home called a chrysalis, and emerges three weeks later a terrifying wasp? Well, that's nature. You see, our beloved caterpillar was eaten, mid-metamorphosis, by the spawn of a wasp who'd laid an egg on it, before we'd hustled it into our home for protection. As I was bringing dill to my future butterfly, it was likely being consumed from the inside out by the larval wasp. When it disappeared into it's shell that process just moved forward, and yesterday was the day, that Pop! Out came the scary, scary wasp.

Not exactly the way Eric Carle wrote it, but Nature will do what Nature will do.

July 17, 2009

It is the waiting time. The cool crops are gone. The tomatoes, zukes, and cucumbers are still at least a week away. If it weren't for the Swiss Chard, which continues to produce despite being cut back as much as two times a week, there would be little harvest in these oddly cool early July weeks.But it isn't the lack of current production that has me worried. In fact, I'm quite comfortable that in just a few weeks time, I'll be so loaded down that I'll be sending gift packs off to friends and neighbors. That is, of course, unless something tragic happens. The white flies have arrived.White flies represent a particularly heinous segment of Creation, at least from the gardener's point of view. They are tiny, snow white, insect that feasts on the pulmonary system of plants, having a particular taste for tomatoes. They are destructive in two stages of their lives. Both the nymphs and the adult flies delight in sucking the life out of tomato vines. Their population can also seemingly explode over night, allowing them to sweep over previously vigorous plants like a chalk scourge, and leaving them twisted, dessicated, and crippled.Making white fly an even a greater annoyance is that no one pesticide can kill both stages of the insect, at least not without posing an immediate and significant threat to other larger creatures, such as young bipedal hominids. So, when I noticed white fly attacking my dill this spring, I immediately feared their next target would be my tomatoes. I had to make a plan. I had to discover a non-poisonous way to control white fly.I had already ordered three praying mantis egg sacs to spread around my yard. My idea in ordering these guys was that they would have a chance to mature with my plants. I also hoped that having a few mantises around to stand guard over my zukes and squash plants, I'd be less likely to lose these plants to the hated squash borer. But in the weeks that had followed my placement of the egg sacs around my yard I had yet to see any mantises. And while I figured a young mantis may eat a few white flies, I also knew a larger one would prefer larger prey. So, I needed to find something else to help me with my white fly problem.By taking a close look at my dill, I got my answer. Well, I should say, by taking a close look at my dill and listening to my two-year-old, I got my answer. Because one afternoon when we were checking on the black swallowtail caterpillars that were living among our dill, he spotted something else. "Lady bug, daddy, ladybug!" At first I didn't see it, but upon getting on my knees to give myself his perspective, I spotted it, a lady bug and it was devouring the white fly.Now, because of my praying mantis order, I knew that the Montana-based Planet Natural also sold lady bugs. It was then that my father-in-law mentioned to me that his tomato plants were also being ravaged. I knew it was time. I logged on to the site and placed an order for 2,000 lady bugs to split between the two gardens.Well, yesterday they arrived, and after a quick summer storm that soaked our garden, the three of us went out to eradicate some white flies. Almost immediately our mission had an unexpected bonus. As Bridget began placing a few lady bugs on the zukes, she spotted our first praying mantis. It was tiny, only about an inch and a half long. But it was as still as a statue, and it was waiting for something, anything (maybe even a lady bug) to creep within its grasp. Confident that my zuccini were safe, I shifted my focus to the tomatoes and started shaking my bag of bugs all over my six-foot plants. Amazingly as they fell from the bag they were able to latch on to the leaves of my plants. Immediately they began their work of consuming white flies. Their technique it appeared is quite similar to that of the white fly, but instead of sucking the life from my plants, there were sucking the essense from the flies that were killing my plants. It may seem wicked, but this delighted me.We made the short drive to my in-laws and released hundreds more lady bugs there as well. There, too, they went straight to work. According to Planet Natural, each lady bug will be able to eat a couple hundred soft bodied insects each day. If I'm right, there are hundreds of thousands of white flies on my tomatoes. But my goal isn't truly to eradicate them all, for if all of them disappeared, so too would my ladybugs. My real goal is to restore some balance to my garden. The white flies can stay, but only in numbers that allow my tomatoes to grow, bloom and give fruit. The lady bugs will also add an interest for my young one, without the prospect of posioning him, which is also a plus. So, in this little garden the cavalry has arrived. Hopefully, the BLTs will be next.

July 05, 2009

When brewing I strive to make the best use of seasonal ingredients. This means brewing potent IPAs when the hop harvest makes its way to my local home brew shop or internet suppliers, mid-summer is the time to crank out a full-bodied cherry stout for the holidays, and early autumn it is time to make pumpkin ale. So, when I noticed a sign at the farmers market informing me that it was the last week when Michigan strawberries would be available, I knew it was time to take the plunge into making a strawberry brew.

My goal was simple, I wanted a light colored ale with a hint of the sweetness of strawberries. But the challenge I faced was greater than I'd anticipated. First, cooking with fresh, unpasteurized fruit comes with the risk of introducing troublesome things like wild yeast, bacteria, and mold spores into your concoction. Clearly, I wanted to avoid this. My approach was two-fold. First, I would pasteurize my pureed fruit at the end of the brewing. After reducing the temperature of my wort to the vicinity of 165 degrees following the boil, I'd introduce the fruit and steep it at that temperature for 20 minutes. Secondly, I would make this a very potent beer, something with an alcohol content that would assist in the brew's preservation.

I already had six pounds of extra light malt extract, but I wanted to go a little further. I decided to use a Belgian Ale yeast from Wyeast, since I was going to have a lot of fermentable sugars. Deciding to go with the Belgian theme, I bought a pound of light candi sugar. Then to finish things off, I bought a 3.3 pound can of wheat liquid malt extract. I did this because most light fruit brews I've tasted were in part wheat beers. Wheat beers are also great summer bears.

So, to review, that was 6 pounds of dried malt extract, 3.3 pounds of liquid malt extract, 1 pound of candi sugar, and 2 pounds of strawberries. Doing the math, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 pounds of sugars for a 5 gallon batch of beer. Now, one would think that I'd need to go a little crazy with the hops to balance out all of these sugars, but I went with a different tact. I decided I wanted this beer to be a little sweet, and I'm counting on the yeast to add some fruit flavors as well, so I didn't want to over-power that with hop oils. So, I went with a rather mild addition of 1.5 ounces of Glacier hops, added in .5, .5, .5 additions. Finally, to assist in head retention and to give the beer a bit more of a golden hue, I began my wort by steeping a half pound of crystal malt, 10L, which is a very light malt.

Figuring I had everything settled, I began to brew. Everything started off fantastic. My steeped grains gave the wort the inner glow I was seeking. But that's where everything I'd expected ended. Upon bringing the wort to a boil and adding my wheat extract, I was shocked to see how dark the wort became. The fact is that liquid malt extracts always darken beer a bit more than the brewer may want, but we're talking definite Dunkelweizen here. The wort went from golden glow to a nut brown almost instantly. I added my first bit of hops and let things ride for about forty minutes before adding the rest of my malt and the candi sugar -- which I dissolved in bowl of hot wort that I laded out of my brew pot. By the time I was done adding my sugars, the beer had a strange dark glow, something close to the sheen of a carp's belly.

When I came time to cool the wort for the strawberry addition, I had another challenge. You see, a liquid with the density made by 12 pounds of sugar dissolved into 5 gallons of water tends to hold heat rather well. Reducing the temperature from a boil at 212 degrees to a hot bath of 165 degrees would require some thinking. I decided to plop my brew pot into a cold bath in the kitchen sink. It took a half-hour, but it worked. I returned the pot to the stove, added the strawberries and something magical happened.

There is something invigorating about making beer out of tap water and a stack of ingredients. It is an experience that truly relies on all five senses, and one that gains access to all five channels of your sensory memory, that part of your memory stoked by a smell, sight, sound, taste or tactile stimulus.

For me the addition of strawberries to the heavy malted wort transported back to my grandfather's spare room, where, as a child, I'd watch the creation of wine. It was there that I learned that almost anything in the garden could be turned into wine, and he was willing to make it so. He made wine from crab apples and onions, from peaches and parsley, and from blueberries, gooseberries, and plums and pears. But the one I remember most is the strawberry. Because there are two tastes of strawberries. There is the heavy sugary strawberry taste of shortcake, the one that's mimicked by Quick strawberry milk and strawberry gum. It's that strawberry that we think of strawberry, but that is really something else, something far more sweet. But then, there is the taste of a strawberry just picked and sliced and gobbled down. It's a taste of two parts, there's sweet and tart. It's a natural berry taste. And it's smell is nothing like the sweet strawberry that gives its name to most things strawberry from ice cream to, well, to strawberry ale. But my strawberry ale has that other strawberry smell, that true spring strawberry.

Now, I don't know what my beer will taste like. And it may well be some time until I do. You see when you have a truckload of fermentables in a beer, you have to give your yeast ample time to work their magic. So, it's possible that I may not even bottle this batch for nine months. It may even be a year. In fact, I may very well get my first taste of my strawberry ale, at about the same time next year that a sign goes up at the farmer's market, warning that time is running out: "Last Week for Michigan Strawberries."

And if it does, well, that timing will be perfect, because it will be just in time to brew another batch.

June 23, 2009

Summer is blasting off like a coal furnace. It's that's humid heat, southern-style, the kind that makes tomatoes, zukes, and cukes explode into green monsters. The kind makes six-legged critters show their dominance of the earth and air. The kind makes iced coffee a necessity, and socks nothing if not intolerable.Of course all of this means only one thing for the cool weather crops. Time's up.After a spring that will go down as one of the coolest on record, and the wettest yet, I can now comfortably declare that this wasn't the best year for the peas and carrots of the world. First came the late snows, then the rabbit boom, then the rain, rain, rain, rain and rain.This isn't to say that my cool weather crops failed. That would be far from the truth. The spring salad mix I ordered from Johnny's has my sister-in-law ready to rip out my father-in-law's lawn so that she can grow her own next year. Can't wait for that showdown. Our spinach was a revelation of sweet, tender leaves that made incredible salad and even better ricotta and spinach pizza. But this weekend, monsoon-like downpours dropped inches of rain. Then the oppressive heat set in. A few heads of Boston bibb letteuce immediately rotted at their core. The spinach, seemingly over night, sent up long stalks to flower and seed, and my peas, my poor, poor peas said, "enough!"I pulled them last night, attempting to get ahead of the creeping yellow that had already taken over many of their leaves. It was quite a final haul. The whole family pitched in, even Moxie the Boston took her share, tugging sweet snaps straight off the vine. The last harvest totalled 8 cups. Not bad for a little plot that was covered with snow two weeks after I planted them and then trimmed nearly to the ground by a young rabbit a month later. Four cups sit in the fridger. Four have been frozen and are ready to bag. I was too late for the spinach. That now sits atop the compost, waiting for the worms.Now is not the time to lament the passing of the cool weather crops. As I mentioned, the tomatoes are taking off. The zukes have sent out thick, fan tipped stalks and are ready to bloom. The Swiss chard is ready to give it's first few leaves to my culinary imagination, and my corn is doing its very best to get knee high by the Fourth of July. Summer is here and my garden is ready. Come on, y'all, let's grow.

June 08, 2009

May 14, 2009

In the next few weeks, I will be extremely busy working on my next series of children's books. Therefore, I will not be blogging as often. I apologize for this. But if you do want to find out when I've updated, you can follow me on Twitter and every time the Kitchen is updated, you'll know about it.Thanks.And get outside!DJ.

May 12, 2009

It's not a real question. Or, should I say, it's not a question that I've been asked yet. And it is the kind of question that I'm working hard to prevent from ever happening. You see, having a child assist you in the garden has attributes that go so far beyond the money you'll save not buying salad-in-a-bag.Growing season is in full swing now. The patches that just a few weeks ago were bare dirt -- or more frequently were covered with snow -- are now bursting with green leaves expanding before the sun. There are the rows we planted, the salad mixes, the spinach, the carrots, onions, peas, and radishes. And then there are the volunteers, progeny of last year's ignored plants that went to seed. Our garden is full of them, sage, cilantro, dill, and even some lettuce.For my two-year-old, each, whether planted or volunteer, is a discovery. He is amazed at the subtle sweetness of baby lettuce, thrilled by the kick of chives, which he plucks by the fistful, and delighted by the menthol tickle of the mint he chomps. But there are also misses. He can't seem to understand why the radish greens are so bitter. He also wants to correct me when I address those vines crawling up the fencing as "peas," after all, there are no peas there, only leaves and tendrils.The garden has become an schoolyard. He attempts to count the rows of onions. He sounds out words like "spinach" and "weeds," which present him with a very challenging concept, one in which some of the plants must be torn from the earth, but others, the one's which, frankly are much more attractive and he'd much rather carry around, must be left in place. The plants in the garden are not like the toys in the toy box at all. They require patience. They require stewardship. They require gentleness. And, no matter how springy a particular plant may look, and how inviting a back row of something may be, stomping through the garden is just not allowed. Not for kids or Moxies, and, to be honest, that is just not fair.There are other lessons in the garden are well. The garden has visitors, like the robins. They like to sit on the peak of the house at watch him closely. Occasionally, one will come down to the garden, but they do not like being chased. Then there is the bunny, which always seems to be there when we first arrive, but quickly scurries away when he notices us in his midst. He lives on the other side of the fence, which for some reason, is a place neither he, nor Moxie, is allowed.Soon we will be able to harvest some of our spring crops. The radishes are quite close. The spinach is exploding. And then, he'll really begin to understand why it is that we spend so much time in the garden. All of that patience and caring, all of that gentleness and not stomping will be rewarded. But, in time, I hope he'll also discover that it's this time, the time of the growing, that really makes a garden part of a family.

May 11, 2009

OK, I understand the sneers people make when they think of boiled meats. It seems the height of unrefined cooking to rely on what is, perhaps, the most simple method one can employ in the kitchen. But with grilling season upon us, and the craving for barbecue sauce caramelized to the point of perfection atop a slab of ribs or a piece of chicken, it is time to reconsider that big pot of boiling water.Parboiling, the act of pre-cooking meats so that you can finish them on the grill, has one attribute that makes it, to me, indispensable. It is a sure fire way to avoid that uncomfortableness you feel when the person across the table from you cuts into their chicken and asks, "does that look pink to you?" Few things will destroy a nice spring dinner like having to spring up, reboot the grill and cook into submission a piece of poultry that was plucked from the fire a little too soon. But there are other benefits to parboiling as well. While it may seen downright counter intuitive the fact is that things like chicken and ribs will remain more moist if the they are boiled for a short time, versus being grilled, flipped, flipped, flipped, poked, prodded, flipped, and then grilled some more. Parboiling can also be a tremendous time saver. What might take up to an hour on the grill, can be knocked out in about 40 minutes with the aid of parboiling. Finally, when it comes to barbecue sauces, you'll want to find that perfect temperature that cooks your glaze rather than burning it to nonexistence. So, parboiling allows a cook to focus on getting the glaze perfected rather than worrying about any salmonella that may be lurking near the bone.But parboiling correctly requires a little bit more than a big pot and some clean H2O. It's important to take advantage of the process to add a little something to your dish. For me, when it comes to parboiling meats that I'll later be dressing with sauce, there are two things I always put into the water: celery salt and a couple of bay leaves. Essentially what this does is create a broth out of the water your're using to parboiling, so rather than boiling meat in water, you're letting it stew in it's own broth. This, for any skeptics, may help you get over that hump.So, how exactly does one parboil using this method? It's simple. Take a large pot, like a pasta pot, and drop in your chicken or ribs. Add a couple bay leaves and a few shakes of celery salt. Fill the pot with cold water. Place on a stove on high heat. Wait until the pot comes to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 20-25 minutes. When you are done, remove the meat, place on a platter, glaze with you favorite barbecue sauce and heat out to the grill to finish it up.If you're feeling inspired you can then use the broth you've created to boil some potatoes for mashed or potato salad, or you can use it to make some rice. Or you can pour it right down the drain. It's all up to you.Now, I know, there will be some people who complain that boiling the meat will steal valuable fat or will introduce the risk of over-boiling, which can leave meat dry. But if you give me the option of simple, safe, and delicious versus difficult, time consuming, and potentially leaving me with pink poultry, well, I say, boil away!

May 07, 2009

When I was writing my hip-hop column for the Chicago Sun-Times it quickly became a success. Every time I'd go out, members of the local music community would tell me that they looked forward to buying the Sun-Times on Friday. They wanted to know who I'd written about that week.

My philosophy was simple: Metropolitan newspapers should cover music the same way the cover high school sports. They should blanket the local artists, expose readers to the great music being done in their own scene, and shine some light on the cats who were breaking their backs for the art they loved. My reasoning for this was simple. If a reader wanted to read about Snoop Dogg or TI or Jay-Z they'd go to VIBE or Rolling Stone or any number of Web sites that had more access, a larger art budget, and way more space for storytelling than I could ever get in a once-a-week, 500-word column. If readers were interested in reading about Psalm One, the Molemen, or Galapagos4, they could find them in the Sun-Times on Friday. There was another thing at play here as well. People are, at their core, parochial beings. They want to take pride in their city, in their community, in what's their's. So if you give them a chance to read about what's going on locally, they just may be curious enough to become readers.

I've long believed the same thing was true for news sections as well: Give people the news the need, but can't find anywhere else! In this week's Christian Science Monitor, Dan McDonough Jr. and Alan Bauer of New Jersey's Elauwit Media drop some science.

At Elauwit Media, we learned long ago that people don't want to "pay" for their news anymore.

We
know that, for advertising to be effective, people have to actually see
the ads. Our business model and philosophy of making sure "Everybody
Gets It. Everybody Reads It." pushes us to bring local news not found
elsewhere to everybody who has an address in town. It fills a very
specific need for our readers and it works so well that, for the past
two years, we have been listed among South Jersey's 10 fastest-growing
privately held companies. We've gone from a start-up in 2004 with
$100,000 in revenue to a thriving company with revenues in excess of
$2.4 million in 2008.

Well, the LA Observer made an update. It wasn't quite what I expected, but maybe I did come off as a little salty yesterday. Anyway, Kevin Roderick also finally responded to my email from Sunday. I've included the whole exchange here.

Sunday, May 3, 1:24 PM

Hey, Kevin,
I'm the guy who wrote the swine flu piece. Don't mind folks re-posting
at all, in fact I'm kind of flattered. But would you mind dropping
folks a note on the original source or maybe even offer a link to my
blog? It's The Recession Kitchen athttp://recessionkitchen.typepad.com/.
Thanks, man. All my best.
Keep your head up,David Jakubiak

Wednesday, May 6, 6:03 PM

"likely no malice here"?? "wholesale jacking of something
without any attribution?" yeesh, what a bizarre attitude. as you
know, la observed claimed absolutely no credit for your piece. to the
contrary, i described in my post exactly how it came to me. far as i can
tell, no one anywhere wrongly claimed any credit for your creation. yes,
whoever started passing it along should have included credit. but then
you do perhaps worse by casting nonsensical aspersions where anyone can
see they don't belong. i'm glad you got in touch to claim credit and i'm
happy to add your link. but now that i know a little about you i wish i'd
passed on the whole thing.
kevin roderick
www.laobserved.com

Thursday, May 7, 8:30 AM

Kevin,
Thanks for getting back to me.
And I'll be more than happy to set the record straight, but come on
now, "maybe I'm a whiner?"
I reached out to you on Sunday as soon as I saw my piece on your site.
You saw my original email, I was not concerned at all. But I didn't
hear back from you. Monday, nothing. Tuesday, nothing. By Wednesday I
was getting concerned, and I wrote a post that I felt was completely
appropriate. I wrote that there was "likely no malice," and you know
what, I was right.
Look, I don't know you. But I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe we have different definitions of "jacking" but that gets away
from the larger point.
By posting something with attribution unknown, and writing that
neither you, nor an editor at a SoCal paper, nor an editor at the
Denver Post could find the original editor, gives a reader the
indication that the piece is orphaned.
Yes, it shows that you really, really wanted to give credit to the
writer, but it also shows that even through your best efforts, the
writer couldn't be found. I understand that. But when I reach out to
you and don't hear anything back for three days, I'm left in a bit of
a vacuum.
So, maybe I'm a whiner.
But maybe, I'm someone who is fiercely protective of his work in an
era in which many publishers are engaged in increasingly audacious
rights grabs, and freelancers see their contracts trampled like Cub's
fans World Series dreams, and thousands of journalists who are really
good people, and really hard workers, and really care about getting
things right, are chewed up by corporate cutbacks and spewed onto the
Web.
Those in the bleachers and those in the luxury boxes get different
views of the game.
Thanks for giving me my dap,
David J.